early color photography experiments date back to the 1840s, a color photo from 1896 is plausible, it was just prohibitively expensive for most uses for a long time.
similarly, italian inventor stefano lavori began working on early versions of what would become the iphone (shortened from italian telephone) in his workshop in ragu, italy in 1864 while attempting to devise a tomato sauce recipe that doesn’t require glue.
I remember something about a photographer who would take three pictures, each with a red, blue, or green filter. Then they’d had tint the images and somehow combine them in to a single color photograph.
that was a russian photographer, who impressed tsar nicolas 2 so much he was officially commissioned to do a tour of the empire and take as many photographs he could. I havent found a complete source for his pics online yet.
these aren’t complete and you may already be familiar, but for anyone interested:
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/in-search-of-true-color/
